In what constitutes its third purchase this year, Google has confirmed the acquisition of South Korean blog platform company Tatter and Company (TNC). The search giant already owns a major blogging platform - Blogger - which it purchased in 2003, so the move is more of an attempt to expand into an Asian market where it has a minimal presence.

Search portals such as Naver.com, Daum.net and Nate.com are much more popular than Google in Korea. TNC provides Textcube, which has some interesting social-networking features and is said to be the equivalent to WordPress in the U.S. So if Google can use it to sneak into the South Korean market, perhaps it can pick up some headway against the region's dominant portals - it's certainly not the first time Google has tried to expand its reach into new markets through acquisitions. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.